[Fsfe-france] Software's game of mutually assured damage

[Laurent GUERBY]

Seen on slashdot, a report from a software engineer
that had to file some patents:

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/30/1091080437270.html?oneclick=true
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/01/2331201

Laurent

<<
[...]
"Don't worry about whether you think the idea is worthy of patenting -
that's for us to decide," the lawyer went on."
Normally for a patent to be worth filing, it has to be
original and inventive.
[...]
 Meanwhile, the firm spends between $50,000 and $200,000 on legal
fees and filing fees for each patent, so we've created over $1 million
worth of employment for our legal friends. This is money that the
company can't spend on research and development, but there you are.
[...]
Software patents, and their accompanying monopolies, have done
immeasurable damage to the world of computer programming, and are one
of the reasons the centre of innovation has moved either to open source
software, or to corporate working groups where everyone agrees to
automatically cross-license all their patents to each other - thus
forming a patent oligopoly rather than a patent monopoly
>>